Exemplary embodiments of the invention relate to a rotary wing aircraft and, more particularly, to a deployable emergency life raft for use by a search and rescue rotary wing aircraft.
Several thousand people drown worldwide each year. In many instances, these deaths are the result of exhaustion, dehydration, and hypothermia induced loss of coordination and consciousness. In instances when survival is not affected by lower temperatures, the task of locating, assisting and otherwise recovering persons in peril from an aquatic environment may be compounded by inclement weather or environmental obstacles, such as fire, ice, or smoke for example, which make approach to the victim perilous to the life of the rescuer.
Overwater search and rescue operations generally require a rotary wing aircraft to cover long distances and grid patterns in search of in-water survivors who may need immediate assistance prior to rescue from a helicopter rescue hoist or a nearby vessel. The need may arise to drop one or more emergency life rafts to survivors at multiple locations. When conventional life rafts are deployed, the life rafts may be rapidly swept away from its deployed location, such that the life rafts provide little or no benefit to physically exhausted survivors who are unable to reach the raft in time.